Imajica 01 - The Fifth Dominion

28

Gentle had forgotten his short exchange with Aping about their shared enthusiasm for painting, but Aping had not. The morning after the wedding in Athanasius' cell, the sergeant came to fetch Gentle and escorted him to a room at the other end of the building, which he had turned into a studio. It had plenty of windows, so the light was as good as this region was ever likely to supply, and he had gathered over the months of his posting here an enviable selection of materials. The products of this workplace were, however, those of the most uninspired dilettante. Designed without compositional skill and painted without sense of color, their only real point of interest lay in their obsessiveness. There were, Aping proudly told Gentle, one hundred and fifty-three pictures, and their subject was unchanging: his child, Huzzah, the merest mention of whom had caused the loving portraitist such unease. Now, in the privacy of his place of inspiration, he explained why. His daughter was young, he said, and her mother dead; he'd been obliged to bring her with him when orders from Iahmandhas moved him to the Cradle.

"I could have left her in L'Himby," he told Gentle. "But who knows what kind of harm she'd have come to if I'd done that? She's a child."

"So she's here on the island?"

"Yes, she is. But she won't step out of her room in the daytime. She's afraid of catching the madness, she says. I love her very much. And as you can see"—he indicated the paintings—"she's very beautiful."

Gentle was obliged to take the man's word for it. "Where is she now?" he asked.

"Where she always is," Aping said. "In her room. She has very strange dreams."

"I know how she feels," Gentle said.

"Do you?" Aping replied, with a fervor in his voice that suggested that art was not, after alt, the subject Gentle had been brought here to debate. "You dream too, then?"

"Everybody does."

"That's what my wife used to tell me." He lowered his voice. "She had prophetic dreams. She knew when she was going to die, to the very hour. But I donjt dream at all. So I can't share what Huzzah feels."

"Are you suggesting that maybe I could?"

"This is a very delicate matter," Aping said. "Yzordder-rexian law prohibits all proprieties."

"I didn't know that."

"Especially women, of course," Aping went on. "That's the real reason I keep her out of sight. It's true, she fears the madness, but I'm afraid for what's inside her even more."

"Why?"

"I'm afraid if she keeps company with anyone but me she'll say something out of turn, and N'ashap will realize she has visions like her mother."

"And that would be—"

"Disastrous! My career would be in tatters. I should never have brought her." He looked up at Gentle. "I'm only telling you this because we're both artists, and artists have to trust each other, like brothers, isn't that right?"

"That's right," said Gentle. Aping's large hands were trembling, he saw. The man looked to be on the verge of collapse. "Do you want me to speak to your daughter?" he asked.

"More than that..."

"Tell me."

"I want you to take her with you, when you and the mys-tif leave. Take her to Yzordderrex."

"What makes you think we're going there—or anywhere, come to that?"

"I have my spies, and so does N'ashap. Your plans are better known than you'd like. Take her with you, Mr. Za-charias. Her mother's parents are still alive. They'll look after her."

"It's a big responsibility to take a child all that way."

Aping pursed his lips. "I would of course be able to ease your departure from the island, if you were to take her."

"Suppose she won't go?" Gentle said.

"You must persuade her," he said simply, as though he knew Gentle had long experience of persuading little girls to do what he wanted.

Nature had played Huzzah Aping three cruel tricks. One, it had lent her powers that were expressly forbidden under the Autarch's regime; two, it had given her a father who, despite his sentimental dotings, cared more for his military career than for her; and, three, it had given her a face that only a father could ever have described as beautiful. She was a thin, troubled creature of nine or ten, her black hair cut comically, her mouth tiny and tight. When, after much cajoling, those lips deigned to speak, her voice was wan and despairing. It was only when Aping told her that her visitor was the man who'd fallen into the sea and almost died that her interest was sparked.

"You went down into the Cradle?" she said.

"Yes, I did," Gentle replied, coming to the bed on which she sat, her arms wrapped around her knees.

"Did you see the Cradle Lady?" the girl said.

"See who?" Aping started to hush her, but Gentle waved him into silence. "See who?" he said again.

"She lives in the sea," Huzzah said. "I dream about her—and I hear her sometimes—but I haven't seen her yet. I want to see her."

"Does she have a name?" Gentle asked.

"Tishalulle," Huzzah replied, pronouncing the run of the syllables without hesitation. "That's the sound the waves made when she was born," she explained. "Tishalulle."

"That's a lovely name."

"I think so," the girl said gravely. "Better than Huzzah."

"Huzzah's pretty too," Gentle replied. "Where I come from, Huzzah's the noise people make when they're happy."

She looked at him as though the idea of happiness was utterly alien to her, which Gentle could believe. Now he saw Aping in his daughter's presence, he better understood the paradox of the man's response to her. He was frightened of the girl. Her illegal powers upset him for his reputation's sake, certainly, but they also reminded him of a power he had no real mastery over. The man painted Huzzah's fragile face over and over as an act of perverse devotion, perhaps, but also of exorcism. Nor was the child much better served by her gift. Her dreams condemned her to this cell and filled her with obscure longings. She was more their victim than their celebrant.

Gentle did his best to draw from her a little more information on this woman Tishalulle, but she either knew very little or was unprepared to vouchsafe further insights in her father's presence. Gentle suspected the latter. As he left, however, she asked him quietly if he would come and visit her again, and he said he would.

He found Pie in their cell, with a guard on the door. The mystif looked grim.

"N'ashap's revenge," it said, nodding towards the guard. "I think we've outstayed our welcome."

Gentle recounted his conversation with Aping and the meeting with Huzzah.

"So the law prohibits proprieties, does it? That's a piece of legislation I hadn't heard about."

"The way she talked about the Cradle Lady—"

"Her mother, presumably."

"Why do you say that?"

"She's frightened and she wants her mother. Who can blame her? And what's a Cradle Lady if not a mother?"

"I hadn't thought of it that way," Gentle said. "I'd supposed there might be some literal truth to what she was saying."

"I doubt it."

"Are we going to take her with us or not?"

"It's your choice, of course, but I say absolutely not."

"Aping said he'd help us if we took her."

"What's his help worth, if we're burdened with a child? Remember, we're not going alone. We've got to get Sco-pique out too, and he's confined to his cell the way we are. N'ashap has ordered a general clamp-down."

"He must be pining for you."

Pie made a sour face. "I'm certain our descriptions are on their way to his headquarters even now. And when he gets an answer he's going to be a very happy Oethac, knowing he's got a couple of desperadoes under lock and key. We'll never get out once he knows who we are."

"So we have to escape before he realizes. I just thank God the telephone never made it to this Dominion."

"Maybe the Autarch banned it. The less people talk, the less they can plot. You know, I think maybe I should try and get access to N'ashap. I'm sure I could persuade him to give us a freer rein, if I could just talk with him for a few minutes."

"He's not interested in conversation, Pie," Gentle said. "He'd prefer to keep your mouth busy some other way."

"So you simply want to fight your way out?" Pie replied. "Use pneuma against N'ashap's men?"

Gentle paused to think this option through. "I don't think that'd be too clever," he said. "Not with me still weak. In a couple of days, maybe we could take them on. But not yet."

"We don't have that long."

"I realize that."

"And even if we did, we'd be better avoiding a face-to-face conflict. N'ashap's troops may be lethargic, but there's a good number of them."

"Perhaps you should see him, then, and try to mellow him a little. I'll talk to Aping and praise his pictures some more."

"Is he any good?"

"Put it this way: As a painter he makes a damn fine father. But he trusts me, with us being fellow artists and all."

The mystif got up and called to the guard, requesting a private interview with Captain N'ashap. The man mumbled something smutty and left his post, having first beaten the bolts on the door with his rifle butt to be certain they were firmly in place. The sound drove Gentle to the window, to stare out at the open air. There was a brightness in the cloud layer that suggested the suns might be on their way through. The mystif joined him, slipping its arms around his neck.

"What are you thinking?" it said.

"Remember Efreet's mother, in Beatrix?"

"Of course."

"She told me she'd dreamt about me coming to sit at her table, though she wasn't certain whether I'd be a man or a woman."

"Naturally you were deeply offended."

"I would have been once," Gentle said. "But it didn't mean that much when she said it. After a few weeks with you, I didn't give a shit what sex I was. See how you've corrupted me?"

"My pleasure. Is there any more to this story, or is that it?"

"No, there's more. She started talking about Goddesses, I remember. About how they were hidden away...."

"And you think Huzzah's found one?"

"We saw acolytes in the mountains, didn't we? Why not a Deity? Maybe Huzzah did go dreaming for her mother..."

"... but instead she found a Goddess."

"Yes. Tishalulle, out there in the Cradle, waiting to rise."

"You like the idea, don't you?"

"Of hidden Goddesses? Oh, yes. Maybe it's just the woman chaser in me. Or maybe I'm like Huzzah, waiting for someone I can't remember, wanting to see some face or other, come to fetch me away."

"I'm already here," Pie said, kissing the back of Gentle's neck. "Every face you ever wanted."

"Even a Goddess?"

"Ah—"

The sound of the bolts being drawn aside silenced them. The guard had returned with the news that Captain N'a-shap had consented to see the mystif.

"If you see Aping," Gentle said as it left, "will you tell him I'd love to sit and talk painting with him?"

"I'll do that."

They parted, and Gentle returned to the window. The clouds had thickened their defenses against the suns, and the Cradle lay still and empty again beneath their blanket. Gentle said again the name Huzzah had shared with him, the word that was shaped like a breaking wave.

"Tishalulle."

The sea remained motionless. Goddesses didn't come at a call. At least, not his.

He was just estimating the time that Pie had been away— and deciding it was an hour or more—when Aping appeared at the cell door, dismissing the guard from his post while he talked.

"Since when have you been under lock and key?" he asked Gentle.

"Since this morning."

"But why? I understood from the captain that you and the mystif were guests, after a fashion."

"We were."

A twitch of anxiety passed over Aping's features. "If you're a prisoner here," he said stiffly, "then of course the situation's changed."

"You mean we won't be able to debate painting?"

"I mean you won't be leaving."

"What about your daughter?"

"That's academic now."

"You'll let her languish, will you? You'll let her die?"

"She won't die."

"I think she will."

Aping turned his back on his tempter. 'The law is the law," he said.

"I understand," Gentle replied softly. "Even artists have to bow to that master, I suppose."

"I understand what you're doing," Aping said. "Don't think I don't."

"She's a child, Aping."

"Yes. I know. But I'll have to tend to her as best I can."

"Why don't you ask her whether she's seen her own death?"

"Oh, Jesu," Aping said, stricken. He began to shake his head. "Why must this happen to me?"

"It needn't. You can save her."

"It isn't so clear-cut," Aping said, giving Gentle a harried look. "I have my duty."

He took a handkerchief from his trouser pocket and wiped hard at his mouth, back and forth, as though a residue of guilt clung there and he was afraid it would give him away.

"I have to think," he said, going back to the door. "It seemed so easy. But now... I have to think."

The guard was at his post again when the door opened, and Gentle was obliged to let the sergeant go without having the chance to broach the subject of Scopique.

There was further frustration when Pie returned. N'a-shap had kept the mystif waiting two hours and had finally decided not to grant the promised interview.

"I heard him even if I didn't see him," Pie said. "He sounded to be roaring drunk."

"So both of us were out of luck. I don't think Aping's going to help us. If the choice is between his daughter and his duty he'll choose his duty." "So we're stuck here." "Until we plot another plot." "Shit."

Night fell without the suns appearing again, the only sound throughout the building that of the guards proceeding up and down the corridors, bringing food to the cells, then slamming and locking the doors until dawn. Not a single voice was raised to protest the fact that the privileges of the evening—games of Horsebone, recitations of scenes from Quexos, and Malbaker's Numbubo, works many here knew by heart—had been withdrawn. There was a universal reluctance to make a peep, as if each man, alone in his cell, was prepared to forgo every comfort, even that of praying aloud, to keep themselves from being noticed."N'ashap must be dangerous when drunk," Pie said, by way of explanation for this breathless hush.

"Maybe he's fond of midnight executions."

"I'd take a bet on who's top of his list."

"I wish I felt stronger. If they come for us, we'll fight, right?"

"Of course," Pie said. "But until they do, why don't you sleep for a while?"

"You must be kidding."

"At least stop pacing about."

"I've never been locked up by anybody before. It makes me claustrophobic."

"One pneuma and you could be out of here," Pie reminded him.

"Maybe that's what we should be doing."

"If we're pressed. But we're not yet. For Christ's sake, lie down."

Reluctantly, Gentle did so, and despite the anxieties that lay down beside him to whisper in his ear, his body was more interested in rest than their company, and he quickly fell asleep.

He was woken by Pie, who murmured, "You've got a visitor."

He sat up. The cell's light had been turned off, and had it not been for the smell of oil paint he'd not have known the identity of the man at the door.

"Zacharias. I need your help."

"What's wrong?"

"Huzzah is... I think she's going crazy. You've got to come." His whispering voice trembled. So did the hand he laid on Gentle's arm. "I think she's dying," he said.

"If I go, Pie comes too."

"No, I can't take that risk."

"And I can't take the risk of leaving my friend here," Gentle said.

"And I can't take the risk of being found out. If there isn't somebody in the cell when the guard passes—"

"He's right," said Pie. "Go on. Help the child."

"Is that wise?"

"Compassion's always wise."

"All right. But stay awake. We haven't said our prayers yet. We need both our breaths for that."

"I understand."

Gentle slipped out into the passage with Aping, who winced at every click the key made as he locked the door. So did Gentle. The thought of leaving Pie alone in the cell sickened him. But there seemed to be no other choice.

"We may need a doctor's help," Gentle said as they crept down the darkened corridors. "I suggest you fetch Scopique from his cell."

"Is he a doctor?"

"He certainly is."

"It's you she's asking for," Aping said. "I don't know why. She just woke up, sobbing and begging me to fetch you. She's so cold!"

With Aping's knowledge of how regularly each floor and passageway was patrolled to aid them, they reached Huzzah's cell without encountering a single guard. The girl wasn't lying on her bed, as Gentle had expected, but was crouched on the floor, with her head and hands pressed against one of the walls. A single wick burned in a bowl in the middle of the cell, her face unwarmed by its light. Though she registered their appearance with a glance, she didn't move from the wall, so Gentle went to where she was crouching and did the same. Shudders passed through her body, though her bangs were plastered to her brow with sweat.

"What can you hear?" Gentle asked her.

"She's not in my dreams any more, Mr. Zacharias," she said, pronouncing his name with precision, as though the proper naming of the forces around her would offer her some little control over them.

"Where is she?" Gentle inquired.

"She's outside. I can hear her. Listen."

He put his head to the wall. There was indeed a murmur in the stone, though he guessed its source was either the asylum's generator or its furnace rather than the Cradle Lady.

"Do you hear?"

"Yes, I hear."

"She wants to come in," Huzzah said. "She tried to come in through my dreams, but she couldn't, so now she's coming through the wall,"

"Maybe... we should move away then," Gentle said, reaching to put his hand on the girl's shoulder. She was icy. "Come on, let me take you back to bed. You're cold."

"I was in the sea," she said, allowing Gentle to put his arms around her and draw her to her feet.

He looked towards Aping and mouthed the word Sco-pique. Seeing his daughter's frailty, the sergeant went from the door as obediently as a dog, leaving his Huzzah clinging to Gentle. He set her down on the bed and wrapped a blanket around her.

"The Cradle Lady knows you're here," Huzzah said.

"Does she?"

"She told me she almost drowned you, but you wouldn't let her."

"Why would she want to do that?"

"I don't know. You'll have to ask her, when she comes in."

"You're not afraid of her?"

"Oh, no. Are you?"

"Well, if she tried to drown me—"

"She won't do that again, if you stay with me. She likes me, and if she knows I like you she won't hurt you."

"That's good to know," Gentle said. "What would she think if we were to leave here tonight?"

"We can't do that."

"Why not?"

"I don't want to go up there," she said. "I don't like it."

"Everybody's asleep," he said. "We could just tiptoe away. You and me and my friends. That wouldn't be so bad, would it?" She looked unpersuaded. "I think your papa would like us to go to Yzordderrex. Have you ever been there?"

"When I was very little."

"We could go again."

Huzzah shook her head. "The Cradle Lady won't let us," she said.

"She might, if she knew that was what you wanted. Why don't we go up and have a look?"

Huzzah glanced back towards the wall, as if she was expecting Tishalull6's tide to crack the stone there and then. When nothing happened, she said, "Yzordderrex is a very long way, isn't it?"

"It's quite a journey, yes."

"I've read about it in my books."

"Why don't you put on some warm clothes?" Gentle said.

Her doubts banished by the tacit approval of the Goddess, Huzzah got up and went to select some clothes from her meager wardrobe, which hung from hooks on the opposite wall. Gentle took the opportunity to glance through the small stack of books at the end of the bed. Several were entertainments for children, keepsakes, perhaps, of happier times; one was a hefty encyclopedia by someone called Maybellome, which might have made informative reading under other circumstances but was too densely printed to be skimmed and too heavy to be taken along. There was a volume of poems that read like nonsense rhymes, and what appeared to be a novel, Huzzah's place in it marked with a slip of paper. He pocketed it when her back was turned, as much for himself as her, then went to the door in the hope that Aping and Scopique were within sighting distance. There was no sign. Huzzah had meanwhile finished dressing.

"I'm ready," she said. "Shall we go? Papa will find us."

"I hope so," Gentle replied.

Certainly remaining in the cell was a waste of valuable time. Huzzah asked if she could take Gentle's hand, to which he said of course, and together they began to thread their way through the passageways, all of which looked bewilderingly alike in the semidarkness. Their progress was halted several times when the sound of boots on stone announced the proximity of guards, but Huzzah was as alive to their danger as Gentle and twice saved them from discovery.

And then, as they climbed the final flight of stairs that would bring them out into the open air, a din erupted not far from them. They both froze, drawing back into the shadows, but they weren't the cause of the commotion. It was N'ashap's voice that came echoing along the corridor, accompanied by a dreadful hammering. Gentle's first thought was of Pie, and before common sense could intervene he'd broken cover and was heading towards the source of the sound, glancing back once to signal that Huzzah should stay where she was, only to find that she was already on his heels. He recognized the passageway ahead. The open door twenty yards from where he stood was the door of the cell he'd left Pie in. And it was from there that the sound of N'ashap's voice emerged, a garbled stream of insults and accusations that was already bringing guards running. Gentle drew a deep breath, preparing for the violence that was surely inevitable now.

"No further," he told Huzzah, then raced towards the open door.

Three guards, two of them Oethacs, were approaching from the opposite direction, but only one of the two had his eyes on Gentle. The man shouted an order which Gentle didn't catch over N'ashap's cacophony, but Gentle raised his arms, open-palmed, fearful that the man would be trigger-happy, and at the same time slowed his run to a walk. He was within ten paces of the door, but the guards were there ahead of him. There was a brief exchange with N'a-shap, during which Gentle had time to halve the distance between himself and the door, but a second order—this time plainly a demand that he stand still, backed up by the guard's training his weapon at Gentle's heart—brought him to a halt.

He'd no sooner done so than N'ashap emerged from the cell, with one hand in Pie's ringlets and the other holding his sword, a gleaming sweep of steel, to the mystif s belly. The scars on N'ashap's swollen head were inflamed by the drink in his system; the rest of his skin was dead white, almost waxen. He reeled as he stood in the doorway, all the more dangerous for his lack of equilibrium. The mystif had proved in New York it could survive traumas that would have laid any human dead in the gutter. But N'ashap's blade was ready to gut it like a fish, and there'd be no surviving that. The commander's tiny eyes fixed as best they could on Gentle.

"Your mystif s very faithful all of a sudden," he said, panting. "Why's that? First it comes looking for me, then it won't let me near it. Maybe it needs your permission, is that it? So give it." He pushed the blade against Pie's belly. "Go on. Tell it to be friendly, or it's dead."

Gentle lowered his hands a little, very slowly, as if in an attempt to appeal to Pie. "I don't think we have much choice," he said, his eyes going between the mystif s impassive face and the sword poised at its belly, putting the time it would take for a pneuma to blow N'ashap's head off against the speed of the captain's blade.

N'ashap was not the only player in the scene, of course. There were three guards already here, all armed, and doubtless more on their way.

"You'd better do what he wants," Gentle said, drawing a deep breath as he finished speaking.

N'ashap saw him do so, and saw too his hand going to his mouth. Even drunk, he sensed his danger and loosed a shout to the men in the passageway behind him, stepping out of their line of fire, and Gentle's, as he did so.

Denied one target, Gentle unleashed his breath against the other. The pneuma flew at the guards as their trigger fingers tightened, striking the nearest with such violence his chest erupted. The force of the blow threw the body back against the other two. One went down immediately, his weapon flying from his hand. The other was momentarily blinded by blood and a shrapnel of innards but was quick to regain his balance, and would have blown Gentle's head off had his target not been on the move, flinging himself towards the corpse. The guard fired once wildly, but before he could fire again Gentle had snatched up the dropped weapon and answered the fire with his own. The guard had enough Oethac blood to be indifferent to the bullets that came his way, till one found his spattered eye and blew it out. He shrieked and fell back, dropping his gun to clamp both hands to the wound.

Ignoring the third man, still moaning on the floor, Gentle went to the cell door. Inside, Captain N'ashap stood face to face with Pie 'oh' pah. The mystif s hand was on the blade. Blood ran from the sliced palm, but the commander was making no attempt to do further damage. He was staring at Pie's face, his own expression perplexed.

Gentle halted, knowing any intervention on his part would snap N'ashap out of his distracted state. Whoever he was seeing in Pie's place—the whore who resembled his mother, perhaps; another echo of Tishalulle, in this place of lost mamas?—it was sufficient to keep the blade from removing the mystif s fingers.

Tears began to well in N'ashap's eyes. The mystif didn't move, nor did its gaze flicker from the captain's face for an instant. It seemed to be winning the battle between N'ashap's desire and his murderous intention. His hand un-knotted from around the sword. The mystif opened its own fingers, and the weight of the sword carried it out of the captain's grip to the ground. The noise it made striking the stone was too loud to go unheard by N'ashap, however entranced he was, and he shook his head violently, his gaze going instantly from Pie's face to the weapon that had fallen between them.

The mystif was quick: at the door in two strides. Gentle drew breath, but as his hand went to his mouth he heard a shriek from Huzzah. He glanced down the corridor towards the child, who was retreating before two more guards, both Oethacs, one snatching at her as she fled, the other with his sights on Gentle. Pie seized his arm and dragged him back from the door as N'ashap, still rising as he came, ran at them with his sword. The time to dispatch him with a pneuma had passed. All Gentle had space to do was seize the door handle and slam the cell closed. The key was in the lock, and he turned it as N'ashap's bulk slammed against the other side.

Huzzah was running now, her pursuer between the second guard and his target. Tossing the gun to Pie, Gentle went to snatch Huzzah up before the Oethac took her. She was in his arms with a stride to spare, and he flung them both aside to give Pie a clear line of fire. The pursuing Oethac realized his jeopardy and went for his own weapon. Gentle looked around at Pie.

"Kill the fuckers!" he yelled, but the mystif was staring at the gun in its hand as though it had found shite there.

"Pie! For Christ's sake! Kill them!"

Now the mystif raised the gun, but still it seemed incapable of pulling the trigger.

"Do it!" Gentle yelled.

The mystif shook its head, however, and would have lost them all their lives had two clean shots not struck the back of the guards' necks, dropping them both to the ground.

"Papa!" Huzzah said.

It was indeed the sergeant, with Scopique in tow, who emerged through the smoke. His eyes weren't on his daughter, whom he'd just saved from death. They were on the soldiers he'd dispatched to do so. He looked traumatized by the deed. Even when Huzzah went to him, sobbing with relief and fear, he barely noticed her. It wasn't until Gentle shook him from his daze of guilt, saying they should get going while they had half a chance, that he spoke.

"They were my men," he said.

"And this is your daughter," Gentle replied. "You made the right choice."

N'ashap was still battering at the cell door, yelling for help. It could only be moments before he got it.

"What's the quickest way out?" Gentle asked Scopique.

"I want to let the others out first," Scopique replied. "Father Athanasius, Izaak, Squalling—"

"There's no time," Gentle said. "Tell him, Pie! We have to go now or not at all. Pie? Are you with us?"

"Yes...."

"Then stop dreaming and let's get going."

Still protesting that they couldn't leave the rest under lock and key, Scopique led the quintet up by a back way into the night air. They came out not onto the parapet but onto bare rock.

"Which way now?" Gentle asked.

There was already a proliferation of shouts from below. N'ashap had doubtless been liberated and would be ordering a full alert.

"We have to head for the nearest landfall."

"That's the peninsula," Scopique said, redirecting Gentle's gaze across the Cradle towards an arm of low-lying land that was barely discernible in the murk of the night.

That murk was their best ally now. If they moved fast enough it would cloak them before their pursuers even knew which direction they'd headed in. There was a beetling pathway down the island's face to the shore, and Gentle led the way, aware that every one of the four who were following was a liability: Huzzah a child, her father still racked by guilt, Scopique casting backwards glances, and Pie still dazed by the bloodshed. This last was odd in a creature he'd first encountered in the guise of assassin, but then this journey had changed them both.

As they reached the shore, Scopique said, "I'm sorry, I can't go. You all head on. I'm going to try and get back in and let the others out."

Gentle didn't attempt to persuade him otherwise. "If that's what you want to do, good luck," he said. "We have to go."

"Of course you do! Pie, I'm sorry, my friend, but I couldn't live with myself if I turned my back on the others. We've suffered too long together." He took the mystifs hand. "Before you say it, I'll stay alive. I know my duty, and I'll be ready when the time comes."

"I know you will," the mystif replied, drawing the handshake into an embrace.

"It will be soon," Scopique said.

"Sooner than I'd wish," Pie replied; then, leaving Scopique to head back up the cliff face, the mystif joined Gentle, Huzzah, and Aping, who were already ten yards from the shore.

The exchange between Pie and Scopique—with its intimation of a shared agenda hitherto kept secret—had not gone unnoted by Gentle; nor would it go unquestioned. But this was not the time. They had at least half a dozen miles to travel before they reached the peninsula, and there was already a swell of noise from behind them, signaling pursuit. Torch beams raked the shore as the first of N'a-shap's troops emerged to give chase, and from within the walls of the asylum rose the din of the prisoners, finally giving voice to their rage. That, like the murk, might confound the hounds, but not for long.

The torches had found Scopique, and the beams now scanned the shore he'd been ascending from, each sweep wider than the one that preceded it. Aping was carrying Huzzah, which speeded their progress somewhat, and Gentle was just beginning to think that they might stand a chance of survival when one of the torches caught them. It was weak at such a distance, but strong enough that its light picked them out. Gunfire followed immediately. They were difficult targets, however, and the bullets went well wide.

"They'll catch us now," Aping gasped. "We should surrender." He set his daughter down and threw his gun to the ground, turning to spit his accusations in Gentle's face. "Why did I ever listen to you? I was crazy,"

"If we stay here they'll shoot us on the spot," Gentle replied. "Huzzah as well. Do you want that?"

"They won't shoot us," he said, taking hold of Huzzah with one hand and raising the other to catch the beams. "Don't shoot!" he yelled. "Don't shoot! Captain? Captain! Sir! We surrender!"

"Fuck this," Gentle said, and reached to haul Huzzah from her father's grip.

She went into Gentle's arms readily, but Aping wasn't about to relinquish her so easily. He turned to snatch her back, and as he did so a bullet struck the ice at their feet. He let Huzzah go and turned to attempt a second appeal. Two shots cut him short, the first striking his leg, the second his chest. Huzzah let out a shriek and wrenched herself from Gentle's hold, dropping to the ground at her father's

head.

The seconds they'd lost in Aping's surrender and death were the difference between the slimmest hope of escape and none. Any one of the twenty or so troops advancing upon them now could pick them off at this distance. Even N'ashap, who was leading the group, his walk still unsteady, could scarcely have failed to bring them down. "What now?" said Pie,

"We have to stand our ground," Gentle replied. "We've got no choice."

That very ground, however, was no steadier than N'a-shap's walk. Though this Dominion's suns were in another hemisphere and there was only midnight from horizon to horizon, a tremor was moving through the frozen sea that both Pie and Gentle recognized from almost fatal experience. Huzzah felt it too. She raised her head, her sobs quieting.

"The Lady," she murmured. "What about her?" said Gentle. "She's near us."

Gentle put out his hand, and Huzzah took it. As she got up she scanned the ground. So did he. His heart had started to pound furiously, as the memories of the Cradle's liquifi-cation flooded back.

"Can you stop her?" he murmured to Huzzah. "She's not come for us," the girl said, and her gaze went from the still solid ground beneath their feet to the group that N'ashap was still leading in their direction. "Oh, Goddess..." Gentle said.

A cry of alarm was rising from the middle of the approaching pack. One of the torch beams went wild, then another, and another, as one by one the soldiers realized their jeopardy. N'ashap let out a shout himself: a demand for order among his troops that went unobeyed. It was difficult to see precisely what was going on, but Gentle could imagine it well enough. The ground was softening, and the Cradle's silver waters were bubbling up around their feet. One of the men fired into the air as the sea's shell broke beneath him; another two or three started back towards the island, only to find their panic excited a quicker dissolution. They went down as if snatched by sharks, silver spume fountaining where they'd stood. N'ashap was still attempting to preserve some measure of command, but it was a lost cause. Realizing this, he began to fire towards the trio, but with the ground rocking beneath him, and the beams no longer trained on his targets, he was virtually shooting blind.

"We should get out of here," Gentle said, but Huzzah had better advice.

"She won't hurt us if we're not afraid," she said. Gentle was half tempted to reply that he was indeed afraid, but he kept his silence and his place, despite the fact that the evidence of his eyes suggested the Goddess had no patience with dividing the bad from the misguided or the unrepentant from the prayerful. All but four of their pursuers—N'ashap numbered among them—had already been claimed by the sea, some gone beneath the tide entirely, others still struggling to reach some solid place. Gentle saw one man scrambling up out of the water, only to have the ground he was crawling upon liquify beneath him with such speed the Cradle had closed over him before he had time to scream. Another went down shouting at the water that was bubbling up around him, the last sight of him his gun, held high and still firing.

AH the torch carriers had succumbed now, and the only illumination was from the cliff top, where soldiers who'd had the luck to be left behind were training their beams on the massacre, throwing into silhouette the figures of N'ashap and the other three survivors, one of whom was making an attempt to race towards the solid ground where Gentle, Pie, and Huzzah stood. His panic undid him. He'd only run five strides when silvery foam bubbled up in front of him. He turned to retrace his steps, but the route had already gone to seething silver. In desperation he flung away his weapons and attempted to leap to safety, but fell short and went from sight in an instant.

One of the remaining trio, an Oethac, had fallen to his knees to pray, which merely brought him closer to his executioner, who drew him down in the throes of his imprecation, giving him time only to snatch at his comrade's leg and pull him down at the same time. The place where they'd vanished did not cease to seethe but redoubled its fury now. N'ashap, the last alive, turned to face it, and as he did so the sea rose up like a fountain, until it was half his height again.

"Lady," Huzzah said.

It was. Carved in water, a breasted body, and a face dancing with glints and glimmers: the Goddess, or her image, made of her native stuff, then gone the same instant as it broke and dropped upon N'ashap. He was borne down so quickly, and the Cradle left rocking so placidly the instant after, it was as though his mother had never made him.

Slowly, Huzzah turned to Gentle. Though her father was dead at her feet, she was smiling in the gloom, the first open smile Gentle had seen on her face.

"The Cradle Lady came," she said.

They waited awhile, but there were no further visitations. What the Goddess had done—whether it was to save the child, as Huzzah would always believe, or because circumstance had put within her reach the forces that had tainted Her Cradle with their cruelty—She had done with an economy She wasn't about to spoil with gloating or sentiment. She closed the sea with the same efficiency She'd employed to open it, leaving the place unmarked.

There was no further attempt at pursuit from the guards left on the cliff, though they kept their places, torches piercing the murk.

"We've got a lot of sea to cross before dawn," Pie said.

"We don't want the suns coming up before we reach the peninsula."

Huzzah took Gentle's hand. "Did Papa ever tell you where we're going in Yzordderrex?"

"No," he said. "But we'll find the house." She didn't look back at her father's body, but fixed her eyes on the gray bulk of the distant headland and went without complaint, sometimes smiling to herself, as she remembered that the night had brought her a glimpse of a parent that would never again desert her.